Washipaper that southes
the soul

Sharp eyes, sharp ears,
a keen nose, rhythm in their blood and patience - that's what
papermakers have to bring to their workshop. In Mino
district, not far from Nagoya in central Japan, artisans have
perfected a centuries old method of making paper. The end
result is unique, more versatile than almost any other , as
costly as silk, and indispensable for restorers the world
over.

"After a day or
two, almost anyone can manage to coax a few sheets of paper
from the vat, but the risk of accepting an order for 500
sheets of identical weight and identical quality should only
be taken on after a decade's experience," warns 81 year
old Sayoko Furuta, the "Mother Queen" of the
papermaker's art in Mino.

'Kouzo' mulberry bark needs to be boiled for several
hours

before foreign particles can be removed.

Once pounded by hand or in a giant blender,

the fibers can be re-aligned by the master to become
sheets of uniform quality.

Her
delicate paper has saved the life of many beautiful but
crumbling scroll, document and ancient map, both at home and
abroad. It is pH-neutral, guaranteed for centuries against
chemical change, and, even soaked in glue, doesn't tear.
Whereas paper produced industrially from wood shavings turns
yellow and crumbly with age, the paper made here by hand
grows whiter and matures, like a good wine.

Known as washi
this paper long fulfilled important functions in
Japanese life. It was used for lanterns, umbrellas, fans and
scrolls - articles which were in use day in, day out, for
years, and stood the test of time. Jackets and raincoats of
treated washi fitted their wearers snugly, while sliding
paper windows diffused the sunlight, bathing interiors in a
soft and even light.

Hardly any
of these articles can be found in Japanese households today,
and as often as not they are imitations made of industrially
produced paper, which is cheaper. In its heyday at the turn
of the century, Mino was home to 4.700 workshops. Now there
are just 30, employing 69 artisans, each specializing in a
particular kind of paper. Mino has developed into one of
three "large" papermaking centers in Japan,
renowned for its tearproof paper with a very smooth surface.

In 1971
the Ministry of Education, aware of the high quality of Mino
paper and eager to protect the craft, declared hon mino
gami (authentic Mino washi-paper) part of Japan's
national heritage. In view of the dwindling number of
workshops and the wide range of different grades of paper
they produce, the rivalries of yesteryear have disappeared.
Today all of Mino's master papermakers are happy to sit down
at one table and drink a cup of sake together.

A stroll
through Warabi, a small riverside village in Mino district,
is balm to the eyes. The houses are regularly distributed at
the foot of the hill like scales on a fish, all with their
front doors facing south, and with large forecourts. Not just
some murky back room, but the best room in the house is given
over to work: the lightest room, immediately to the right as
you come in, mostly four by four meters in size, houses all
the tools needed for papermaking.

Now and
again a scent of sweetish vapor wafts out of a vat; pieces of
mulberry bark, the raw material for washi, are soaked and
then simmered for a few hours in a weak lye. This dissolves
the natural resins, leaving the fibers lying loosely next to
each other. After a final meticulous inspection, the bark is
meshed into pulp.

Here and
there the visitor will come across a long building echoing to
merry chatter. Kneeling at trough, their legs folded like
pocket-knives, elderly ladies inspect the tip of every fiber
under cold running water. They notice soft black impurities
at once by sight, light woody growth by touch, and both by
experience. After the cleaned strands of 'kouzo' were turned
into pulp with the help of a giant 'blender', it is up to the
master - who may well be a woman - to scoop out regular
sheets from the vat in which the fibers are immersed. To do
this a screen made of fine bamboo dowels woven with
silkthreads is used. To prevent the fibers from sinking to
the bottom of the vat, the gelatinous juice from Tororo Aoi
roots, a relative to the Hibiscus and Okra plant is added to
the vat. No felts, as in Western Papermaking, is needed to
separate the wet sheets from each other. The next day the
pile is pressed, and the damp paper is drawn over wooden
panels with soft brushes and dried out in the sun.

To explain
the intricacies of making washi , master papermaker
Danjaku Ichihara draws a simple comparison: "A cake will
always work: 500 grams of flour, a pound of butter, 125 grams
of sugar - the proportions don't change, no matter whether
it's raining, snowing or there's a thunderstorm raging
outside. For our paper, though, we have no such fixed recipe.
" The masters change their proportions almost
intuitively according to the air pressure, temperature and
humidity. The ingredients are organic, and their behaviour
varies with the weather.

"We
also have to plan production so that we have good drying
weather when we're finishing with the scooping process,
" explains Masashi Sawamura,. If a pile of damp paper
cannot be dried, bacteria and mold will ruin many days' work
in short time. " My parents were better weather
forecasters than the experts in the radio," he laughs.

The
quality of paper can also suffer as a result of another kind
of "athmospheric" disturbance. " When I am
making these large sheets with my husband, we declare a
marital truce," say Mrs. Asako Ohta, as she dips the
long frame into the vat in unison with him. "A number of
orders have come in during some domestic crisis. The result
was akin to scrambled eggs on the bamboo screen."

Married
couples form the core of the team in a workshop. Outsiders
are rarely employed. Although it's mostly the women who stand
at the vat the whole day, while their husbands boil the bark
and dry the paper, it's the latter whose names appear on the
certificates, and who do the talking in negotiations. But the
lady masters are content to leave these formalities to the
menfolk while they get on with more important matters, such
as refining techniques.

But the
papermakers are only one section of the orchestra. Without
the craftsmen who make the screens, the precisely trimmed
frames and boiling utensils, and without the farmers who grow
the mulberry trees, no master would ever be able to produce a
single sheet of paper. But the number of such workshops and
plantations has sunk to a dangerous level: there are only
five screen weavers and three framemakers left in the whole
of Japan. The growing of mulberry demands similar care as
tending vinyards, and few young Japanese are interested in
this kind of work.

Restorers
of ancient documents and calligraphic scrolls are the only
people still absolutely dependent on handmade paper. Sotaro
Yamaguchi in Yaizu City needs three different kinds of paper
to restore the suppleness to scrolls which have grown brittle
with age. "We are very worried about the shortage of
apprentice papermakers," says
Yamaguchi."Papermaking is like an oral tradition, passed
on from generation to generation like the baton in a relay
race. If it's once dropped, the whole rhythm is lost, a
rhythm which has been handed on from person to person for
over a thousand years. "